Chapter 16: The Red Scooter

Rafe was out of the bed before I had finished sitting up.

He found his boxers, lost his trousers under the blanket, and found them again.

"Mommy?" Rory shouted from the hall. "Why is there a shirt on the kitchen floor?"

"Tell him it's a rug," Rafe whispered.

"It's a shirt, Rory."

"Whose shirt?"

Rafe closed his eyes.

I pulled the sheet up to my chin as the bedroom door swung open.

Teddy stood in the doorway in his dinosaur pajamas and looked at his father, who was holding his belt in both hands.

Then he looked at me.

"Did you have a sleepover?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"In your bed?"

"Yes."

Teddy nodded, very seriously.

"Grandma said you might," he said. "She said if the car was outside, we weren't to run in screaming."

"We're not screaming," Ivy said, arriving at his elbow.

"You said no screaming, Rory."

"I'm not screaming!"

My mother appeared behind them, holding a paper bag from the bagel place on Davis.

She looked at Rafe's bare chest. She looked at the open button on his trousers.

"Put on a shirt," she said pleasantly. "There's cream cheese."

I have never loved my mother more.

Twenty minutes later the five of us sat in my kitchen. Rafe wore yesterday's shirt with the missing button.

Rory picked up one of the lemons off the floor and held it up as evidence.

"Why were these down here?"

"They fell," I said.

"Lemons don't fall."

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